


Drabblation

by Izzy_Grinch



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil (Movieverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Feels, Bromance, Caring, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FINALLY a proper vacation, Fluff, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Leon's bloodhound, Leon's jokes, Living Together, Love/Hate, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, almost married - Freeform, but sort of very soft Love/Hate, grumpy Sasha, protective leon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7924738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little pieces of love, wrapped in pain and despair.</p><p>Mostly, it's Leon joking around and Sasha staying grumpy (duh), and both of them being deeply in love, cause that's why we all are here, rrright? The wheelchair is optional.</p><p>More to come!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1-10

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Drabblation](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3316190) by [Izzy_Grinch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izzy_Grinch/pseuds/Izzy_Grinch). 



**#1 Comfort**  

Leon's apartments were a typical bachelor's lair, where nobody was living at all. The kitchen was new as if it came right from the catalogue’s pages, the rooms were near-empty, the bathroom had a shower cabin instead of an actual tub.

Buddy reclined on the back of the couch and closed his eyes. He had been missing that simple feeling of comfort for too damn long.

  

**#2 Rain**

The rain caught him on the way from the school and forced him to cover on the bus stop. He still couldn’t drive the wheelchair with just one hand to hold the umbrella with another.

It was a real downpour, the kind of those which fall rapidly in the tropics, though he had no idea at all how it’s like out there, in the tropics.

Leon, wet from head to toe, run under the roof.

"Uh, we’ve missed each other again!"

He shook his head, spattering the water, squatted in front of Buddy and patted him on the knee.

The rain was furiously beating down.

 

**#3 Name**

" ‘Buddy.’ You know it's not good enough even for a dog's name, right?"

"Well, thanks. JD should have asked you how to call me."

"And ‘Sa-sha’ is hard to pronounce. We don't have this sound in our language."

"You don't have a lot of things here. As tactful behavior, for example."

" ‘Alex.’ "

"Keep your Americanisms to yourself."

"Alex."

"Absolutely not."

Leon presses his lips to Sasha's ear and moans hushfully:

" _Aaahlex_."

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?"

"Giving you a new name."

 

**#4 Life**

When the cables ripped and the elevator cabin started falling down, Leon saw his entire life's flashing before his eyes. Buddy saw only the hand, reaching down for him.

 

**#5 Weakness**

Leon's weakness is helping the other people. He would die, but drag every stranger he just met for fifteen feet more, if they couldn't move by themselves.

Sasha's weakness now is his worthless legs. He's disabled and imprisoned to a wheelchair forever, and he can’t walk anymore even a bloody foot, not talking about fifteen.

But here's Leon, lifting this useless body up in his hands and climbing the stairs, leading to the flat, and then he goes back for the wheelchair.

 

**#6 Always**

The bar was too smoky.

"How long are you going to pay for my drinks?"

"Always. Wanna peanuts?"

 

**#7 Home**

 

Schools, dwelling houses, the entire streets are destroyed. The time hasn’t been enough for cleaning all the bodies and the scattered remains of the mutants, so now they’re roasting in the sunbeams, emitting the horrific fetor.

The chopper lands next to the withered fountain. Leon has to shout the rotor's noise down:

"I'm asking you for the last time! Are you going?"

"I need to be here. It's my home."

"Well, then drop me a line!"

Leon shakes his dry palm and, jumping over the piece of iron, which sticks from the asphalt, he gets into the cabin.

The chopper takes off, throwing the trash around.

 

**#8 Waves**

The pain is bearable until it comes to its peak. Then it feels like the giant waves, one by one overflowing him up to the hilt with their crashing power; hitting him in the chest, pressing his ribs to the spine; knocking him down, turning his kneecaps inside out; deafening him, tearing his eardrums; blinding him, clouding his eyes with the acid salty water.

Then the storm calms for a little while, but every other wave seems to become the last.

 

**#9 Speed**

The work is done. The wheelchair bounces, running over the threshold of the garage, and comes out on the street. Buddy has some doubts, but Leon pats him on the shoulder encouragingly.

The wheelchair starts to vibrate, rushes forward with the low rumble, slowly at first, but then gathering the speed, faster and faster along the empty road.

"Well? Isn't that awesome?" Leon shouts behind his back. He's made a little step there, like the dogsleds have, with the rollers instead of the runners.

Buddy doesn't answer. His eyes are misty in the wind.

 

**#10 Supermarket**

Buddy had never been to such enormously big stores. Sure enough, America's too different from his homeland. JD would like that difference. Sure enough…

"We have to walk around the _entire_ place?" he looked at the shopping list in Leon's hands.

"Yup. The both floors and every section by 8 pm."

"And… what’s so special about 8 pm?"

Leon beckoned Buddy closer and explained in the intriguing whisper:

"That's the time when the staff closes all the exits and catches those who haven't left in time, to make hamburgers outta them."

Buddy realized belatedly that Leon’s making fun of him. He grinned back and took the cart.

"Well then, beware of being turned into hamburger yourself, or else those who'll eat you can sure enough get a stomach upset."

 


	2. 11-20

**#11 Sun**

"Now that's what I call a proper vacation!"

Leon dropped the travel bag on the floor and slid the glass halves of the terrace door apart. Behind the thirty feet of the clearest white sand there lied the dark blue sea.

"Mr President asked where, and I just pointed my finger at the map, so the villa's become mine. Unfortunately, that's the one and only privilege of being a government agent."

Standing in the shadows of the room, Sasha still hadn’t dared to come out to the beach. Leon leaped skillfully over the railing, and the sun started playing in his hair.

   

**#12 Enamored**

Leon always considered himself to be in love with Ada. Because she’s oh-so-cool and all these sort of stuff and that slit dress of her…

However, after two weeks of midnight Skype chatting with the Eastern Slav Republic he realized he was wrong.

  

**#13 Death**

Everyone was dying.

His bride, his pupils, his friends, his enemies, his lickers. Some strangers in the alleys. Stray animals. Burned plants.

Everyone was dying. Everyone except for him.

 

**#14 Happiness**

The steam was wreathing between the water surface and the low ceiling. Every object, reflected in the misted mirror, was turned into the vague blurs. The door was covered with condensate as if sweating. Leon slowly dipped into the warmth of the bath. The fresh wounds started to tweak. The numbed muscles had relaxed.

Maybe, that's what people call happiness.

 

  **#15 Hands**

The ribs are creaking in the tight grips of the steel-clad Tyrant's hands. Leon can't breathe. He can't take even a simple damn breath. Not even the only one. He can't−

Buddy's hands shake Leon up in the middle of the night to snatch him out of the nightmare's claws.

 

**#16 Pain**

Leon moaned and groaned in his mind, though he managed to control himself and even remained standing.

He wasn’t a troublemaking kid back then, didn’t get into a big bunch of fights or messes, didn’t fall from the fences or the bicycles too often, so he'd managed to keep his nose in its original (and quite fine, thank you very much) form.

But at that time it felt like his organ of smell (and a little bit of _spell_ ) made a full turn around his head and lost its breathing abilities forever.

Kozachenko had a very heavy fist.

  

**#17 Fear**

Grinding his teeth under the noise of the helicopter's blades, he bears the flight obediently. He doesn't utter a word at the airfield, where they’ve been brought, and takes his seat in the plane docilely. It's shaking a little while gaining attitude, and he digs his fingers into the armrests until his knuckles turn white.

He imagines his body finally giving up somewhere aloft and the monster breaking out, crashing his skull. He imagines the murderous tentacles spinning furiously and cutting Leon's head away, the shooting starting, and the plane falling spirally into the Pacific.

"We'll get that thing out of you," leaning over the seat, Leon puts a bottle of cold soda on Sasha's pate.

 

**#18 Sex**

They’ve stretched on the chilly floor, both are wet of sweat and hot. There’s a hammering sound in Buddy’s ears. Leon’s so close that their shoulders are touching and the skin of the one is almost fused with the skin of another.

“Oh, you’ve worn me out…”

Buddy pushes Kennedy away with his inappropriate commentary and smiles a little.

 

**#19 Phone**

He loved his badass and pimped-out phone sooo much. Its filling was just a little bit less cool than the complicated structure of human's brain. Leon installed the newest programs all by himself, even if they were stubborn sometimes and Hunnigan always suggested to "send a knowing man to save what you haven't spoiled yet". However, it's unlikely that "a knowing man" could solve the problem with repeating satellite communication's loss. But it's okay, they were quite happy like that, together, without any men and satellites over there. The phone knew some commands, the kind of "work, you, shit", and "shut up", and "for the fuck's sake where's you bloody charger"; it could also serve as an alarm (on the even days) and tell the news on the uneven ones, and sometimes it played a half of a random movie as well. Kennedy strongly believed that in about a year the magnificent list of his phone's functions would be replenished with an electric shaver or a flask, full of fine thirty-year-old Scotch.

But their happiness couldn't last any longer. So when the phone was thrown into the dust and treaded down with a dirty boot, Leon heard how his heart’s breaking along with the plastic phone's case.

  

**#20 Wind**

Maybe it's the wind's howling or maybe the emptiness of the bed, but something just wakes Buddy. It's the dead of night, and the trees are swaying outside the window. In the darkness Buddy tries and finally finds his trousers, then comes down to the kitchen.

"It's 3 am. What're you up to?"

"Coffee. Sandwiches," Leon puts a plate on the table. "I was up to offer you some love making, but you just snorted and turned away," he shrugs, "So I've found the worthy alternative."

Buddy rolls his eyes and straddles a chair. God, these stupid Batman pants Leon’s wearing again...

"The hurricanes are a common thing here. You have to get used to them," Leon drags another chair closer to Buddy and sits.

"Well then," Buddy yawns, "Let's go."

"Huh?"

"You're offering something back then..."

In the morning they chew the cold sandwiches and watch with curiosity their neighbor furiously running in circles around his car, squashed by a fallen tree.


	3. 21-30

**#21 Gift**  

"I swear, that was you − you're the one to infect me. With a purpose!"

"Your faith in me, being pleasured heavenly with a sight of your swollen mug, is completely amazing."

"Well, it's nice to know that I can amaze you even in my current state."

"Everyone talks of their own sores, though Leon always talks about himself… Here, take your birthday pills. I can pour some whipped cream on it, if you−"

"And what's in another hand?"

"It's just a wrapping paper and three layers of the stickiest tape."

"My ass, let's have a look! So it's… it's… Dammit, you really have a binding kink!"

"You didn't complain the last time."

"Hang on− _Left 4 Dead_ , 'r you kidding me? I've had enough of that shit in my life, thank you very much. And, by the way, I don't have an Xbox."

"You already have. So eat your goddamn pills and drag your sick butt into the living room."

 

**#22 Acquaintance**

A giant bloodhound, rising to its full height, almost knocks him down when puts its heavy paws onto his shoulders.

"Sit, Guido, sit."

Leon slightly pats the dog near its tale, and Guido backs obeyingly, though still fixing the watchful gaze on the guest. Struck by a sudden instinct, Buddy reaches his hand, following the hound's muzzle. The cold nose sniffs the palm and seems to be pleased with its smell. Buddy scratches the wrinkles behind Guido's long floppy ears.

"You've never told me you have a dog."

"Wanted you two meeting to be a surprise."

"Well, yes, it _is_ a surprise; the dog looks more intelligent than the owner."

Guido turns his head to Leon and raises his ginger eyebrows with a sign of mockery.

  

**#23 Storm**

A nimble, sharp lightning flashes somewhere far away behind the dark clouds, but strikes straight into the aim and kills right on the spot. The lightning runs over the skin with its blue glow of static electricity.

A heavy rolling thunder immediately follows after: although its peal doesn't cause much damage, it draws the aim's attention away.  The thunder charges the lightning with its power.

 

**#24 Sky**

Buddy woke up and, lying on his side, watched the sky. Or maybe, it only seemed to be the sky. At least, it was blue and sparkling and full of fair weather promises.

"D’you think of how awesome I am?"

"Oh, fuck off."

Buddy turned away. The morning sky outside the window was much worse.

 

**#25 Melody**

Leon always follows the rhythm. The rhythm of his breathing; of his and enemies' steps; of the single shots, alternating with the rounds of bursting fire. All of these dangerous, alarming sounds merge into the one special melody, which rings inside his head, resonating slightly of the brainpan's sides.

If Leon could hear only the cold explosions and the rumble of his own pulse, he would lose his mind long ago.

 

**#26 Smile**

Unfortunately, they both don't smile too much. In Leon's case there's only a smirk, and it's so sassy that sometimes it's hard to say whether he's going to kick your ass or let you conquer his own arse right here and now. In Sasha's case things are a little bit worse, for he wears only a grin with a poor amount of emotions.

But after finding each other in the airport's fuss the first thing they both do is smile widely.

 

**#27 Kiss**

The operation was quite difficult. After the anesthesia Sasha suffers from the horrific thirst, as if he has a hangover, and the somnolence. He falls into the dreamless blackouts from time to time and, waking up, finds himself to be too lost in time.

Kennedy's cheerful face shows in the doorway.

"Finally!" the agent comes closer to the bed, with an inquisitive expression looking at the peeping devices around it. "Guess what? They told me to wait until 9 am, the official hour of visiting. Like if I was waiting for the entire night, it's a piece of cake to wait a lil’ longer! As if I've listened to them, pfft…" he smirks, being so satisfied with his disobedience.

Sasha wants to ask how has Leon managed to get here then, but it feels like a heavy drift of sand is pressing his tongue down.

"You look pretty good without the redness in your eyes and all these, you know, _argh-i-hate-everyone_ stuff."

Leon slightly touches the pillow an inch away from Buddy's cheek; he doesn't touch Buddy because he's afraid to hurt him.

"There's a water vendor downstairs, with ice and everything. Better take it here and grab some drinks, how d’you think?"

Sasha shuts his eyes for a second in agreement, answering to Kennedy's awkward care, and then Leon's already on the doorstep.

"Be back in a heartbeat," Leon turns round to blow him a kiss.

Unwillingly Sasha's dry lips curl into a faint smile.

 

**#28 Hair**

Leon never accepted the barber’s services and trimmed his grown hair only by himself, putting a bunch of mirrors around. In Buddy’s opinion, long haircuts suited Kennedy quite well, but that was one of those little guilty pleasures you always stay quiet about, so Sasha remained silent and sometimes even offered his help with shaving the nape at least. Leon answered in his favorite smart-ass manner:

“Nope, thank you very much. Don’t wanna be baldy again, had enough of that in the army.”

Or:

“You know, I’m not _just_ an agent. I’m a _super_ agent, and that implies a wide and pretty big range of my talents.”

However, when the last hair was washed down the sink, and the trimmer and scissors were put back onto the shelves, Leon had turned to be sitting in Buddy’s lap, with the most natural expression on his face he could ever make up, and with his hands, leading Sasha’s palms confidently to the back of Leon’s head to check the accuracy of the shaving.

 

**#29 Heavens**

“Do you think if there’s someone out there?” Buddy leans back his head, pressing his nape to the granitic side of the fountain.

“Well, yes, there’s definitely a couple of angels. And I’m pretty sure, they aren’t watching us right now for some damn good reasons. Otherwise, how’d you explain this: me with a knife at the ready against those armored twenty feet tall bogies?”

“How can you keep joking−”

“And what do you suggest? To hug and cry instead?”

The volley of shots dashes down, tossing the asphalt crumbs, and pierces the closest Tyrant to death with bullets.

No matter if there’s someone or not, today the heavens want these two to stay alive.

  

**#30 Potato**

Buddy had finally fit himself into the things, Leon realized, when he stepped over the threshold and for the first time sniffed not the smell of the everlasting ready-to-cook food, which  they both, a couple of lazy bachs, had been regularly eating for weeks, but the bake scent, pulling pleasantly the stomach.

“It’s like I’m married. Good evening, hon.”

“It’s like you’re an idiot. Oh, wait, you actually are.”

They opened beer and half-emptied their bottles in complete silence. Buddy was irritated. Leon was swallowing the saliva and guessing, what’s inside the oven.

“A potato pie. Irina taught me how to cook. It was the only way to make JD stop babbling for at least half of an hour.”

He smiled briefly and had almost dropped the slippery bottle, when Leon slapped him on the back heartily.

“Well then you have to bake seven more, ‘cause I’ll eat this one in a wink.”


	4. 31-40

**#31 Ears**

The night before Halloween was restless. Buddy had heard so many stories about this foreign holiday that his own impressibility together with his mind played a bad joke on him: there was goddamn Kennedy in his dreams, wearing the Easter Bunny suit. He was jumping at Sasha’s heels all night long, trying to attach a pair of bear ears to him. “I’ve got vodka and balalaika too!” he shouted, making five-foot-long leaps. Buddy was tossing and turning, crumpling the blanket and still seeing the same delirium after waking up and falling asleep again.

Towards the daybreak he’d run out of patience and finally sprang out of the bed, starting to search for his clothes with a not fully formed but still quite strong intention to leave the country at any costs.

However, there were not his pants in the wardrobe but that loony bastard Kennedy, who just fell out, wrapped in the bloodstained sheets, and almost gave Sasha a heart attack. Then he told impulsively that after the last _Comic_ whatever he still had the unworn suit of a broody elf from some kind of a video game, and that he wanted to order a pair of pointy ears specially for Buddy, but then he realized Buddy had nothing to do with elves, so he’d bought a wonderful flossy beard instead and− please no punching in the face− please− _ouch_.

And the most scarring thing was that Buddy missed the moment when his dreams and reality had become so insanely similar. 

 

**#32 Touches**

He puts his palm around Sasha's calf and moves it upward, massaging the muscles. He leans down and touches gently the skin below the knee with his lips. Buddy shudders.

“What's wrong?”

“It's like− I−“

They stare at each other tensely, with a slight doubt, and then Leon asks him to close his eyes, and kisses carefully his second knee. Buddy inhales:

“I _feel_.”

  

**#33 Wholeness**

If life is some parts, gathered together: the family, the friends, the home, the bakery on the street corner − then this war has destroyed them all, one by one, methodically, indifferently, and left no one except for him, Buddy, who's now only a hollow shell, a shed skin, which he can't wear again. The pain of loss is so blinding that he feels as if he's been living like this for eternity; as if there was nothing else; as if the meaning of life was always in death − the sooner it comes the better.

If life is some parts, gathered together: the worlds of encouragement, the hand pulling you up, the supporting shoulder, the wisecrack in the moment of despair − then Buddy can live through. 

 

**#34 End**

The first post-war school year ends a little bit too joyfully, a little bit too nervously, but these people have their rightful reasons to celebrate and stay happy, after all. There's a prom night in their primary school, with dances in the ballroom, and fluffy dresses and tuxedos, looking so absurdly funny on the little kids.

Buddy’s not wearing a tie; with a vague, sullen feeling somewhere inside his chest he watches his pupils. Those of them who's− He promised himself to think about this as little as possible, but how can he−?

"You have only these fancy fruit juices here, what a luck I took something special with me."

Buddy turns his wheelchair with a fast jerk to see Leon saluting him and lifting a jacket's flap where the familiar flask is glistening dimly with its plain side.

 

**#35 Sickness**

Buddy doubles up and vomits right onto the clean floor of their reserved Volkswagen: there’re some reddish clots − probably, the lumps of his lungs or other internals − in the slush which streams out of him. Leon holds Sasha's shoulders tight, and at these short moments, when Sasha straightens himself up and their eyes meet, the agent's expression is full of genuine and desperate compassion.

It’s suddenly become worse after his blood pressure jumped during the landing: the gore poured from his nose, the cough squeezed his chest with its candent pincers. Plaga devours his weakening body, reducing his chances to survive.

Slumping to Leon’s lap, Buddy shivers in spasms, which rip his swelling and hurting nerves, and there’re tears, unwillingly welling up in his eyes. Jesus, he’s so miserable… Why hasn’t Leon shot him back then, why don’t shoot him right now? Buddy only wants this sickness to let him go.

 

**#36 Freedom**

“Do you take everything so literally?!” shouts Buddy at the top of his lungs, trying to outvoice the noise of the spinning chopper’s blades.

“Can’t hear you!”

Of course, he can, that sly ass, Buddy thinks, as Leon checks the bindings, tightening the straps where it’s necessary.

With a look of great sadness on his face Buddy remembers himself saying, without any hint of realization what on earth could go wrong:

“It feels like I’m encaged here. Every day everything’s the same: you go away, and what am I supposed to do, huh? I need something to engage myself, need somewhere to go, within the district limits at least.”

“Exactly what I’m working on right now!”

He is a suspect in the case of the biological weapons, and he’s surely wrong, nagging Leon, who’s barely managed to get him a right to settle down in a civilian apartment instead of a government prison. Leon’s risking, fighting for his, Buddy’s, freedom.

Too deep in his thoughts, Buddy misses the countdown and forgets how to yell, when the cabin’s floor disappears under his feet and the green canvas of meadows, surrounding the vast lake of Michigan, spreads beneath him.

 

**#37 Devotion**

JD’s devotion was measured in the strictness. The harsher Alexander was, the rougher his words sounded − the stronger became the attachment of this lad, who hadn’t played too much war. And so devotion threw JD into the embrace of death.

Lickers’ devotion was measured in Sasha’s strengths. The longer he could give the orders, the louder he called out for the plaga, dwelling deep inside of him − the more efficient his creatures were. And so devotion doomed them to perish.

Leon’s devotion defies to be measured. It’s inexplicable and irregular. Leon wards off any insult; Leon curls up the corner of his lips against any hatred; Leon catches the fist with his unarmed palm. He is devoted to the monster, and Buddy is afraid to think how far this devotion can lead them.

 

**#38 Star**

Leon sprawled carelessly in a center of the messed bed, as if a cannon-ball had burst on its surface.

“So, that’s how you’re going to spend the entire vacation? Pretending to be some kind of a starfish? Without even a tiny attempt to unpack our bags? It’s my call for some help, if you eager to know.”

Leon yawned, bended his leg slightly but then straighten it again, too lazy to move.

“How dost thou know, the forest dweller, of how the starfish does regard?” *****

“Oh, don’t you consider me as an idiot,” Buddy crumpled the towel irritatingly and flung it at Leon. “Won’t you even go outside?”

He returned in an hour with a new portion of reproaches and didn’t find Kennedy at the place he’d left him. The towel was gone too, the doors were opened wide. After some brief wanderings along the beach he finally saw Leon, lying in the same position, near the water.

“So? That’s how you’re gonna spend the vacation? Staring angrily at my perfect body? Mumbling gloomily under your nose?”

Buddy made a snort. However, by the evening there was one lazy starfish more in the soft tidal waves.

****

_*Leon’s being a mocking poetic asshole. I dunno what he was thinking about − maybe that he sounds like Shakespeare or else? Anyway, he tries to be annoying so Sasha would leave him alone._

**#39 Bounds**

The rows of the white chairs under the token tent, which covers them from the summer heat, lead to the arch, decorated with some flowers, the names of which Buddy doesn’t know. The sun is beating down. The guests are impatient to cut right to the drinking part, though all of them are waiting decorously for the ceremony to finally end. Leon is shining. Last evening he proudly walked around in his new suit, and made the fiancé unconsciously drunk. It’s turned out that he always wanted to become someone’s best man.

“But surely not yours, old chap!”

After Leon’s friendly pats on Hannigan’s back  she lost one of her lenses, replacing the severe glasses for the wedding time. They all then were awkwardly searching for it in the grass.

Buddy watches radiating Ingrid passing by, with her husband and guests, and he follows, when Leon comes up.

“I will,” Buddy says calmly, while rice and springy streamers are being strewed from above.

There’s a silent question set on Kennedy’s face, but in the next second this face is the most beautiful thing Sasha has ever seen.

 

 **#40 Simple** - **heartedness**

“Nevertheless, I was a burden to you. Why hadn’t you left me to save yourself?”

“Believe me, I’ve known the burdens much heavier than you.”

“Do not evade my question.”

“Who’s evading? Me? No. Oh− a’right, I know that look. So, you wanna hear… what? That I fell in unrequited love with you the same moment we met?”

“Listen, I just want to hear the reason why. I tried to kill you, remember?”

“And still trying from time to time.”

“For God’s sake, Kennedy−”

“Okay. You want to hear the truth at 1 a.m.? Here it is. I saw pretty clear you’re a good guy, the one who’s not okay to leave behind.”

“You− and that’s all?”

“Yup. I suppose. All thanks to my intuition, babe.”

“I… I can’t even call it naivety, it’s somethi− How’s it even possible you got this job?!”

“Uh huh, that’s my favorite story, you’re gonna like it!”


	5. 41-50

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's Luis in the 46th one.

**#41 Hell**

For the last hours preceding the operation he is deep into the world of the feverish hallucinations − the creation of his inflamed mind and the poisonous plaga. There’re thick puddles of blood, spreading in front of his closed eyelids, screaming people, disfigured bodies and remains, glowing red, forming the dead piles. He’s a human now, the next moment he’s a beast, who’s almost lost its will and is unable to stifle this wasting thirsty. He’s turning into a monster, no matter how hard the doctors and the scientists are trying to save him. And when he steps into the ninth circle of Hell, everything here will be immersed in chaos.

He opens his unfocused eyes. There’s a face in front of him, slightly familiar. It’s blurred and misty, and then it leans toward him and whispers softly:

“Welcome back.”

 

**#42 Supernova**

The flash of pain is so blinding as if the supernova has flared up, the Sun has burst and a couple of galaxies have collapsed, all at once, inside of his body. For a moment he seems to be unconscious.

“What the f− hell?! Missed the head, you, bloody idiot?!”

Leon puts the gun away and helps him to stop the spilling blood. Looking at these improvised bandages, Buddy can imagine the gangrene creeping into his wound and settling there with comfort.

“I do not miss.”

Sasha rails at Leon, curses him with every word coming to his mind. The pain is sickening, he can’t feel his legs and he already wheezes, his voice being completely strained.

“Not even I’m alive, for fuck’s sake, I am disabled now! I am paralyzed, damn you!! What’s it? You’re final gibe?! Oh, just wait, you, bastard− I’ll get you−”

Leon waves his weakening hands away the same way he’ll wave aside Sasha’s awkward gratitude later. Though right now Kozachenko’s craving to rip Leon’s trachea out.

 

**#43 Poison**

It was easy to bring oneself to do it. Many things had become much easier with the war. The moral choice had been reduced to its minimum: protect your people and blow enemies’ brains out.

It’s all the same from now on since he had nothing more to lose. No one. He couldn’t save even JD, so what’s the matter now? It wouldn’t get any worse. Not for him.

That’s why Sasha didn’t hesitate, and so the death from the capsules poured gently into his body. Even if he dies, he would poison those who’d dared to break him.

 

**#44 Bite**

Buddy looks closely at his reflection as if it’s the first time he sees himself in a mirror. However, it’s not the body he’s looking at − it’s these two reddish crescents, a teeth-print. With Irina− He promised himself so many times to not compare the past with the present, but still he does it, accidentally, unwillingly. With Irina things were different. There was no aggression or ecstatic lust, as if this exact moment is the last they have.

He squints to the right to see Leon’s shaving, narrowing his eyes sleepily. His shoulders, and the stomach, and the back are covered with a bunch of small bruises. Those ones which had been left during the last mission − they have already gone; but these ones − these are new. Every time it’s like they are losing their minds: they always break furniture and smash dishes, sometimes not even making it to the bed. With Irina…

Buddy shuts his thoughts, meeting Leon’s gaze. Kennedy yawns slowly and leans to kiss Sasha, staining him with the shaving foam.

 

**#45 Water**

Human body contains sixty percent of water. Alexander, who has studied this subject as a teacher, can tell with a pretty big amount of confidence it’s not true. For the one third of agent Kennedy’s body is filled with whiskey, and the remaining space is occupied with the self-satisfied and quite weird sense of humor. Leon’s pretty sure that a stand-up show of his own would guarantee him not only to get old with comfort, but even to lead a wealthy afterlife.

“But there’s sort of a problem with the afterlife tho, ‘cause my morning jogs provide me with _eternal_ youth.”

“Oh yeah? And your morning doughnuts? What do they provide? An ass sticking for eternity?”

Well, yes, leave the five percent for a box of glaze and powdered sugar.

“Nope, you ‘rong,” Leon convinces with his mouth full. “No donuts, those’re a secret FBI doping.”

Then he changes his countenance and searches thoroughly the kitchen with his gaze full of helplessness, so Sasha has to stand up and bring Kennedy some water. So, in fact, this body does contain a glass of water.

 

**#46 Jar**

One summer his father decided to amuse himself by collecting insects. He caught them with a bug-net, put them in a jar, where the pieces of cotton were already waiting, saturated with chloroform, and screwed the lid very, very firmly. Then the bugs were slowly falling asleep to get on the pins and, after all, to decorate the book-shells, much to his mother’s displeasure.

However, Sasha’s displeasure nobody cared about. That’s why he tiptoed his way to the killing jars and opened all the lids for a short while. Butterflies, moths and wasps escaped immediately. Cockroaches, ladybugs and other flying things made it to the exit as well. But those ones which were wingless, wounded or too small, stayed at the bottom. Every time his father wondered at the insects disappearance, though he always seemed to be unaware of what’d happened here.

“Oh, hello, bud! You’re early! Wanna join?”

Leon, who has never allowed himself even to smell the cigarettes, is smoking now and flicking the ash off into a saucer, as well as his unexpected guest.

“Remember that story of seven years standing ‘bout Mr President’s kiddo? Well…”

Sasha does remember. He remembers clearly how helpless were the insects, lying on their convex backs and struggling to stand on their legs again. He remembers perfectly Leon telling him about Spain, enjoying every word.

With a languid weariness in the eyes Luis Sera salutes him, and Sasha feels how the lid starts to tighten up above his head.

 

**#47 Riddle**

“ ‘A grumpy person?’ Five letters, the last is _‘y’_. ” Leon slips off his chair a little to reach under the table and kick Sasha under the knee slightly, drawing his attention. “Huh?”

The power of Sasha’s gaze is pretty close to the power of a shotgun.

“Oh, you’re goddamn right! _‘B-u-d-d-y.’_ Fits!”

 

**#48 Trash**

The floors became empty in two days of their intense work. The rooms seemed bigger at that moment, or maybe it’s him who’d diminished. A tiny receptacle of life at the foot of the immense walls, built of memories − that’s what he’s now inside of his own house.

All the things from the shells, from the drawers and the closets; all the trifles, kept with care; the mugs with their edges chipped, the quilts − all of them went into the bags and boxes. He decided to throw away the main part of it, to get rid of it physically, knowing that he’d regret later. But there was no place for that heartache in his new life, and he thought that he could overcome the pain.

The bags with trash were rising at the sward like a blue mountain. There’re about twenty of them, or maybe thirty, all stuffed up to the gills and ready to take their last journey to the dump.

Leon appeared on the steps with a box, one of the dozen they’d picked for the humanitarian aid. He jumped a little, stamping down the tile which had tumbled out of the garden walk.

“Now, this is the last one.” He came closer, his boots creaking. “I go and deliver them.”

They were silent for a moment, looking at the garbage, and then − at the dark holes of windows. Sasha didn’t want Leon to come; to pat him on the shoulder; to take any interest in his being; to support and make him believe in the future. Sasha wanted to quietly lose his mind somewhere in the back room. But Leon came here the next morning after their phone conversation.

“Let’s grab some drinks when we’re done. The flight’s gonna be long, and I have no chess or else. You’re in?”

Sasha noticed the contours of the photo frame under the polyethylene and turned away. He felt sick.

“You’re buying.”

 

**#49 Cards**

“Gonna rob you blind,” Leon says with a professional gambler air and stretches his fingers so hard they make a loud crunch.

“I’ll count the moments…”

“I was the best one in the Police Academy,” Kennedy keeps boasting, his smile’s glaring bright.

“I bet…”

“And when you lose, don’t even think of blaming me for the unfair game!” Leon seems to have no doubts in his winning at all.

“I’ll try.”

“Shuffle or not, there’s no hope for you!” Well, yes, he’s damn sure he’ll win.

“Perish the thought.”

The game is relaxed and almost peaceful, and when it’s over there comes a loud tirade:

“You’re a goddamn cheater! Wanna know what’s happened to such like you in the Academy?! You took all the kings in your greedy hands!”

Sasha smiles softly, as Leon kicks the sofa in a warm blood and hisses at the hurt foot.

 

**#50 Fingerling**

“There’re no fish,” Buddy said when into the luggage rack − apart from a tent, the sleeping-bags made for a hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit below zero, a campfire kit, the flare pistols, the spare boots, and a basket with food for the entire week − Kennedy thrust a pair of fish-rods and a box of tackles as well. “As far as I remember, there were no fish at all…”

Leon volunteered to drive. He’d also volunteered to spend his vacation in Sasha’s motherland, which Sasha didn’t insist on or even breathe a word about. And so, Buddy had no choice, but to accompany Leon − with all his dubious plans and ideas − to the distant lake, where Sasha used to come every weekend.

“And we’re going there only for a day, what’s the tent for? And what’s inside that backpack?”

“Zombie Kit,” Leon reported briefly, switching the radio station. He preferred heavy music, while Buddy thought music in the car to be pretty distracting. However, at that exact moment he didn’t want to argue.

“What?”

“Zombie Kit. A backpack for the case of zombie Apocalypse. Aids, firearms, bullets, water purification tablets, and so on.”

“Jesus. You must be kidding?”

Of course, he was kidding. Later, instead of the listed things Buddy would find a loose knit sweater, a pair of jeans and some terry towels.

“No fish,” he reminded, watching Leon unwinding busily the fishing-line. “Even my father−”

“Oh c’mon! Isn’t it aw’some to get away from all that work and go fishing with a good company? Isn’t it?”

Buddy just grumbled quietly and sat down to wait patiently for something to bite and for himself growing old and mossy.

“Gaaaangwaaaay!!”

He almost pushed Buddy of the damned berth, diving into the water like a dolphin, that is to say he was completely naked in the way all dolphins are.

“You’ll scare the fish away!” Sasha wanted to flare, but, realizing there’s nothing to scare at all, he just cursed colorfully.

And then, after the waves, caused by Leon’s jump, had calmed, and Kennedy had furrowed all the visible expanses of the lake, the float jerked a little, and then again, and again, so Sasha started to set the hook eagerly, and when it was just inches away, Leon came to the water surface.

“Now for fuck’s sake, what do you think you’re doing?!”

“Trying to make you remember your first catch.”

He hauled himself up easily, shook his hair despite Buddy’s desperate screams of protest, and with his entire body, wet, slippery and naked, he leaned heavily on Sasha.


	6. 51-60 (Luis 5:5 Sasha)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first five are Leon/Luis; the other five are Kennechenko.
> 
> It was an experiment, the good one, tho i won't probably do this again.

**Luis Sera**

**#51 Sorrow**

He doesn’t talk too much as he’s used to; he doesn’t care anymore about the hair, covering his face − it protects him, more or less, when he no longer can pull a lenient smile onto his lips. Though, he was kinda alright at the court, without even knowing that he would be acquitted; he even made a thanksgiving speech at the following party in the small pub, where they decided to celebrate the happy outcome. There were some guys from the police department as well; he still owes some of them money for that game of mus they had once.

Leon comes closer and squeezes Luis’ shoulders, forcing them to square, and then, barely touching, he puts a wavy lock behind Luis’ ear.

“How− _maldita sea_ − There’s so much blood on my hands, but here I am, sitting like nothing’s ever happened. They had their families, their habits, their faith…”

Leon’s thumbs stroke his neck, going up and down, gently, bewilderedly.

“Isn’t it too much guilt for just one man?”

“The other men are dead and gone, and so their guilt is mine now. _Cómo_ −” He digs his fingers into Leon’s wrists with such despair, as if a dark abyss has spread its wide mouth under him. “How can you bear all these deaths? Knowing you’re unable to save everyone? How can you sleep at night?”

For a second Leon, suddenly numb, presses his lips to the back of Luis’ head.

“Well, I guess… it’s just my specific attitude.”

He laughs quietly. But his fingers grow stiff as if Luis is the only thing which can keep him afloat.

 

_*mus − a Spanish card game_

_**maldita sea − dammit_

_***cómo − how?_

 

**#52 Intoxication**

A white surgeon’s coat and the gloves − they are his second skin now, softly enveloping him. Things are not too sterilized here, though people try their best, they really do. The samples come to the lab every day, without any hitches: sometimes at five in the morning, sometimes an hour before sleep; there’s no end of work to be done; and he’s around, among all these priceless documents, devices and thin lancets, although it was not that long ago when Luis, tightening his bulletproof vest, had been catching some thievish bastards right in the center of Madrid and settling drunken brawls at the weekends.

“You’re working for the good of your country, Luis,” he kept telling himself, hearing the bragging teens shouting dirty curses at him. The police robs their youth when forbid them to wave their fists and chase pretty female tourists.

“You’re working for the good of your country, Luis,” the words are blazing in his mind, as he gives a volunteer an injection of the parasite. The volunteer was once their neighbor, with whom Luis’ grandfather used to attend football matches. The volunteer was threatened with murdering of his family and grandchildren, but Luis will only know this when it’s already too late.

 

**#53 Blink**

He’s too scared to inhale. What if the shaking air will make this mirage to fade away? What if it’s only an illusion, hanging between floor and ceiling?

He’s too scared to talk. Maybe it’s a lost echo, caught in the cage of four walls? What if the sound of his voice will frighten it away, drown it, break a fragile shell with an ocean, roaring inside?

He’s too scared to touch. The hand is afraid to find the emptiness, or to flinch, finding the softness of the wax. What if it’s a frozen reflection, cold, soldered into the mirrors of hall and bathroom? What if it’s a silent figure, a plaster replica of a gleaming shadow?

Because Luis Sera has done an impossible thing. He has _survived_. The blood was poured back into him; the set of internals was completed again; and the hole was carefully sealed.

And now Leon’s looking at him until there’s a sharp pain in his drying eyes; he’s watching to let that vision become burnt in his retinas, become imprinted under his open eyelids, so, when Leon finally blink, it will stay with him.

 

**#54 Mask**

The suitcase is left untouched, the bed is messed, and the wine corks are lying everywhere on the floor.

Leon’s mind is misty; the skies are wrapped in a thick trail of Tempranillo, deep and dark as the sugared coffee-beans; and the spirit of festivity reigns on the streets. It’s all about the madness of colors, the odor of flowers and burning toasts; the heaps of paper garlands are swirling around his ankles; the spring carnival threatens to spread around the whole planet, or to cover it with a warm wave, to wash it away into the wild seething joy.

He got lost just an hour ago, or maybe two, or maybe thirty years ago.

“Gotcha!”

The mask is embroidered with black pearls, there’re golden speckles gleaming in the eye holes, the lips laughs and tastes of bitter-sweet mocha.

 

_*Tempranillo − the finest of black grapes in Spain_

 

**#55 Memory**

“I could make a book about all that crazy stuff! Which, you take my word, gonna be incredibly successful.”

“Such a brilliant idea, _amante_. Want me to bring my grandfather’s typewriter? I miss its rhythmic ‘tap-tap-tap- _putamierda_ -tap-tap’ so much…”

“ ‘He wasn’t shutting his chatty mouth since that fatal moment when curiosity made me open the damned wardrobe.’ ”

Luis, stretching his long legs and putting them onto the bed’s back, shook his finger at Leon. Barely covered, he shivered every time the fan turned away from the window.

“Don’t forget the epilogue. ‘And so young Miss Graham has learned forever why it’s not worthy to fall for pretty agents of her respected daddy.’ Masses are pretty greedy for the hints, proving their guesses.”

“−or maybe they’ll make a movie outta it. Or even a game!”

Luis laughed, the Adam’s apple moving under the skin of his beautiful neck.

“Oh, I will certainly attend the casting. The last thing I need is some _Frenchman_ to play my character.”

“A’right, maybe I went too far, they’ll probably screw everything up. The book tho…” Leon kept dreaming. “As a keepsake for the descendants…”

Luis arched his brow, almost breaking it in halves.

“ _Perdón?_ ” he moved his leg onto Leon’s shoulder and closed the eyes, holding his breath, when Leon kissed the daring ankle. “Where would they come from, your descendants?”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“Of speech, then… The SA-writer…” A slightly dusky hand slipped along the knee and under the corner of a bedspread, which the American had snatched to himself. “Anyway, nobody would believe you. And they’d make the main character a woman. With the unfortunate love, I bet.”

 

_*amante − lover_

_**puta mierda − fucking shit_

_***perdón? − beg your pardon?_

 

**Alexander Kozachenko**

**#56 Fairy**

They don’t talk about this too often for some obvious reasons: if only for a second Buddy feels sorry for himself, then Kennedy, full of lofty moral principles and oh-so-Captain-America’s ideology, starts flaring in a rush of inspiration. One word leads to another, and they can stop talking for the rest of the week.

And so it is now…

“JD would love that! If only he−”

“Oh, please. We’ve come to the agreement.”

“About what? Tabooing the past? They’re still a part of me, Leon, and−”

“No problems, bud, but after every ‘if only’ there’s always ‘I’ve lost everything, what a pity I’m still alive… eh? _‘What about you, Leon?’_ Well, you certainly understand that you can’t replace them _blah blah blah−_ ’!”

“Oh, pardon me for affecting your boundless self-appraisal. Someone should.”

However, this time Leon punches him in a jaw so hard that for the next five minutes Buddy’s counting stars, flashing around.

Then they’re mournfully silent, staring at the tooth on a coffee table, and Leon hands Sasha some clean napkins, taking away the bloody ones.

“We can put it under your pillow, so the fairy−”

The meaningful look Sasha gives him makes Leon to jump off his seat.

“I’d better bring some ice.”

Nevertheless, with the help of the boisterous American the trophy goes into the mentioned place, so the next morning Sasha jerks his hand back from under the pillow, not fully realizing, as he’s still half-asleep, what the heck he’s just touched.

The tooth is gone. There’s a ring instead. It’s quite simple, without any jewels or etchings, and it sits perfectly on his finger.

“Alright then,” Buddy says agreeably, while Leon, almost losing his mind of happiness, looks at Sasha’s hand. “And what does that ‘fairy’ have in case of _your_ unforeseen injuries?”

Kennedy radiates.

“Oh, I love pit bulls!”

“Absolutely not.”

 

**#57 Midnight**

At first it was only about him returning home as soon as it’s possible. Going through the hospital rooms and all the examinations, he knew that it would end someday, everything would get back on its regular course again, and he’d be back to things he’d used to do. And, what’s important, not here.

The American was chattering too much about his job. There were so much stories sitting on the tip of his tongue that it’s unlikely they all could ever happen to a normal human being.

“Why’d you even devote yourself to such job?” Kozachenko was asking him, staring into the glass.

The American was wrinkling his forehead, or tossing a beer bottle lid up, or breaking toothpicks, and then saying something like:

“Welp… honestly, I’ve always dreamt about becoming a pool cleaner.”

Kozachenko was wondering only why he hadn’t become a clown.

A few months later the thoughts about his home began to fade away. A few doubts later he signed some papers (frankly, there was a bunch of them, but it wasn’t allowed to talk about that), forget about sleeping well, and covered with the smell of gunpowder. The American was praising him for making good progress, but secretly − Kozachenko had been taught to recognize such things − he was envying how his new badge was shining.

Hunnigan looks at him with interest.

“So, why exactly have you decided to join us?”

He opens the file, marked as ‘RESTRICTED’, and skims through its upper sheet. Project: MIDNIGHT. Priority: HIGH. Agents: LEON S KENNEDY, ALEXANDER KOZACHENKO.

“The geography teacher salary was damn low,” he answers.

 

**#58 Unlucky**

The bad luck was always walking side by side with Alexander Kozachenko.

First, a dog bit him. It was the dog of his parents’ friends, so they apologized to him and scolded the pet, but since then for some unknown reasons dogs had proclaimed Sasha their mighty god, though their love wasn’t actually mutual.

Then he happened to be the highest student in the class, and was stupidly mocked for this by kids, and asked by teachers for things to do, perfectly normal in their all-knowing opinions, but quite humiliating in classmates’ ones.

“Sasha, please, would you be so kind as to take the globe from the top shell?”

“Sasha, stay after the lesson and water the flowers on the bookcase.”

“Do someone feel stuffy? Let’s ask our dear Kozachenko to open the window. Sasha−”

He decided to become a teacher for reasons, so no one would ever dare to make fun of him or someone else.

So, is it necessary to explain that it was only a small quantity of troubles, comparing with those waiting ahead?

But Leon Scott Kennedy was the quintessence of Sasha’s muddles; however, Buddy had no choice, but to swallow nervously and back away until his shoulder blades met the wall, and his belt met the hungry fingers.

Leon was of a perfect height and smirked warmly with his sharp dog’s fangs.

 

**#59 Scars**

This map is not of those to buy at the train station. It can’t suggest you how to spend your weekend, can’t assist you to plan your family holidays. It can only help you to read the past, if you dare to.

The finger-pads are coarse as the tough canvas: thanks to the gun, the ropes, the jerking steering wheel of an offroader. The knuckles are grazed, but already healing: thanks to the intense trainings, the self-defense. The little finger’s phalanx of the left hand is missing: carelessness is always followed by punishment. The light-colored strokes are spreading over the shoulder and the forearm, and a couple of the crooked ones are hiding behind the ear: the glass had gashed out, he wasn’t too quick to take cover, but he remembered the most important thing − to shield the eyes. The knotty scar on the thigh next to the artery: every minute was counted, he had to mend himself right on the battlefield. The burn, down the shin, he got the same day, disinfecting his wound, left by the rusted splinter, with fire; if it went a little bit deeper, he wouldn’t be able to stand up again. The furrow on the cheek: Leon shouted, but wasn’t heard under the thundering bursts, so he had to shoot, risking. Leon is a good shot, the proof is here as well, among the other scars − the radial star on the spine.

It’s an intricate map, paid heavily and not finished yet, and only the two know its full legend.

 

**#60 Chain**

At 4 in the morning they call from the hospital; the voice on the other side is harsh, the doctor remains cold, and that coldness forges a firm and tight chain around Kennedy’s throat. What’s he even supposed to do? To cry? To yell? To blame oneself? Himself? To try and bring him to reason? To punch him? The chain is so heavy that he needs some time to get up from the bed.

At 5 a.m. Alexander sees Leon’s face, his whitened lips, his tired and helpless gaze, and he hangs his head immediately, having no strengths to resist the weight of the steel links: of shame, of rage, of pity. He failed to put an end to it, he shouldn’t even try to; here they look after him so attentively to never let any of his inhales become the last one.

They both are silent. The chain is dragging them down like an anchor.


	7. 61-70

**#61 Courage**

He has enough courage to shoot the Ataman. He grits his teeth until they creak, but still he somehow forces the trigger into the body of his gun.

He has enough guts − much more than an ordinary teacher could have − so he lets the plaga to crawl inside.

He’s brave, he’s desperate, he’s probably a little bit out of his mind, when he hops into the abandoned tank and tries to beat the shit out of a many-foot-tall giant.

And he has enough strength to accept the doctors’ hopeless verdict. Either as to make the first uncertain move with his fingers, while everyone around cries: “Unbelievable!”

However, when the air in the bar is so thick you can cut it with a knife and put on plates, and when Leon’s rolling a piece of ice in his mouth, Sasha’s throat turns pretty damn dry, and his head turns pretty damn empty, so he can barely lift his eyes and falter:

“Well… ehm… would you like to, maybe, go out somewhere… tomorrow…?”

  

**#62 Spikey**

Sasha returned home just in time to find an unexpected addition. Well, honestly, he didn’t mind fish or something fluffy and encaged reliably. A dog would ask for too much of responsibility; and cats were not Leon’s favorite pets, which, however, never prevented him, while visiting Hunnigan, from following her white arrogant Persian, who allowed touching only when lying in his owner’s hands − and only when she’s wearing black. And the birds Sasha was allergic to. Or, at least, that’s what he believed.

But the cactus, Kennedy was fussing over at that exact moment, had obviously stood apart every sound and common conception of pets.

“What the heck is this?”

Leon broke his greeting off, and they both fixed their gazes on a pot in the middle of a dinner-table.

“Well, I just felt the lack of diversify in our family life, so…” Leon visually showed the epitome of his ‘so’, pointing at the green cudgel, bestrewn with spikes. It was crooked, and ugly, and − Buddy had counted − hexahedral.

“Now, _where_ exactly do you feel the lack of diversity−”

“It’s gonna grow forty-foot-tall, if we observe all the conditions!”

Buddy rubbed his nose bridge irritatedly, aching of helplessness.

“It makes conditions? Then here’s mine too: get rid of this monster ‘till it makes a hole in a ceiling and introduces us to our dear neighbors upstairs!”

“But I already named it−” Leon threw up his hands.

In his mind Buddy called upon some divine forces, asking just what’s he guilty of; Leon started to chuckle, as if everything was done just for this particular moment.

“Guess, how?”

“I swear to God, if only my name−”

The American reached a hand out and patted him on the shoulder, and then assured him in a tone which one uses to inform you about the accrued interest of credit you’ve never taken:

“The world doesn’t revolve only around you. Meet the…” he drew Buddy closer, “…the _Grumpy_ _Spikey_.”

**#63 Talisman**

They say it is unworthy of a teacher, especially the one of such respect, especially the member of the opposition. They say, but they doubt their own words; may this man have his little weaknesses, they think, and may they be shown in the school hallways? They instill that it’s a bad example for the kids, especially the boys, but if only they attend his classes, they would see him answering with such enthusiasm his pupils’ straightforward questions about the legs, and the scars, and all of the things the war has rewarded him with.

They say many of very unjust words, but none of it will force him to take the empty flask off his wheelchair back.

 

**#64.1 Fantasies**

Someday the town will be resounded with the wails, and the dry bursts of machine-guns fire will pour down the districts, like the peas into a tin can. The civilians will flee in panic, and those who linger will stay here forever as a part of this damned place. Will he hesitate, joining the rebels? Or will he, seeing JD supporting the forces so genuinely, yield to his persuasions? Will they kill anyone? Will they become killed? The opposition has an ace in the hole − something horrific, inevitable, irretrievable in such a fatal way the United States will join the war. Will they just blow the Republic off the Earth’s surface? Or will they, wavering under the dreadful power, just turn back? Or will some upstart hero, an American with a pretty high call of duty, get into this hell, wrecking the government plans? Or will he be immediately torn up by the rebels, who are blinded with the fury towards the oligarchy, so they don’t see an inch beyond their noses? So pathetic that the cowardice will never allow them to leave their safe corners and take the arms in their hands?

Alexander imagines everything so vividly, everything from the death of his dearest to the color of the American soldier’s eyes, and he flinches, when the school bell’s trill rushes into his thoughts, and a bunch of exercise-books falls onto his desk.

He looks outside the window, at the greyish streets, and he thinks of the war which will never happen, because everyone in this country is too afraid, and he himself is not enough.

 

**#64.2 Fantasies**

Was it all different − without any murders, and mutants, and idiotic politics − he would go there on his vacation. Why not, really? He always liked the extreme trips. Just remember that safari in Kenya! The fever had caught him on his way back home, right in the International Airport, and then he woke up in the local first-aid post with his pockets surprisingly empty. Hunnigan should never find out about that incident.

“Mombasa, Leon? Obviously, we don’t load you up with enough work, if you still have strengths to chase tigers in prairies!”

“Crocodiles. The tour title’s ‘Crocodile Weekend’. Wanna me to bring you crocokids?”

Of course, she was right: since that last journey every holiday he was spending in some sort of anabiotic sleep, squeezed like a lemon for a fresh. Though he did wanted to start snowboarding!

But for a change he could get a basic tourist kit and go into the Eastern Slav Republic, live in a hostel, try the local cuisine, ask a sullen man for a fine pub. Would he sneer with a disregard for strangers? “You’re holding your map upside down, smart-ass.” Or would he return a smile? “Oh, there’s one, not so far. Come, I’ll show you the way.”

Leon moves close to Buddy’s naked back and hears him grumbling in his sleep.

 

**#65 Anticipation**

The lift is going up slowly, as if passing through the thick layer of glycerin. Their shoulders are pressed to the opposite walls of its cabin; and while Kennedy is leaning to it, all calm and relaxed, Alexander is almost squeezed into the metal as if by a blast, and forced to tense every muscle. Three floors ago they were kissing wildly, bumping with their teeth so hard that it was echoing inside their skulls. Buddy’s heart is beating somewhere in his throat, clenched from all around, his legs are springy, ready to make a step forwards at any second. Leon’s seemingly cool, but he’s flushed and from time to time he traces his lips with the tongue.

The door’s clang causes an effect of an alarm. Leon is the first to push oneself away from the wall.

 

**#66 Fire**

Today people drink so much as if it’s their last chance to lush; today the truce has been concluded. Who knows, maybe it will be broken overnight or will last for many years and give them enough time to heal their wounds, to erase that bygone horror from their memories, partly at least, so the breathing wouldn’t be so hard to do like there’s a rail lying across their chests.

People drink, and yell toasts, and sing songs in every language they can remember, and the soldiers in the American uniform speak by gestures with the former rebels and spin yarns, and everyone laughs; but under these masks of cheer everyone has the gypsum grimaces of fear, despair, loss. And this dark tangle, sodden with sweat, and clotted blood, and alcohol, and tobacco, pulsates with life, and in the center of it all is he − looking like a spot of light, which shimmers through the water column and reaches the bottom where you’re lying, drowned. And he’s so young, and he’s so brave, and Sasha doesn’t even know what’d be enough to break him, and drag him through the salty dust, and force him to kneel, and make him scream and beg for death, like Sasha did just a few days ago.

And his face shines so friendly, while he drinks on someone’s money, and buys drinks on his own ones, and shakes someone’s hands, and exchanges understanding nods with people that it’s painful to watch. And Sasha’s ashamed of his own display of weakness. And so he turns away. And his cold shoulder flares of Leon’s touch.

 

**#67 Passion**

The drops roll down the hair to the temples and trace moist lines along the cheekbones. The strands stick to the wet forehead’s skin, the T-shirt clings to the prominent shoulder blades. The blood comes in waves, bringing to read heat, burning inside like a pepper. The oxygen is worth its weight in gold, its every portion fills the weary lungs with joy. The elbows, freezing for a moment, continue to move quickly, keeping the rhythm. The eyes are misty. There’s no more air to breathe.

“Hhhholy crap! You trying to set the flat on fire?!”

As fast as a sprinter Buddy rushes to the window, gives a punch to the vent, which isn’t keeping up anymore, and opens the oven. It blazes with volcanic heat. The smoldered corpse on the grill cannot be identified at all, but, considering the date − which is Thanksgiving − the deceased were once a turkey, though it’s the last thing this body is similar to.

No matter how much passion Kennedy applies, the cookery is still not on the list of his talents.

 

**#68 Vortex**

The blinds are pulled up and fluttering in the draft. Leon’s spreading the cherry jam over the toast, looking from under his brows at Buddy washing dishes. There’re three more pieces of bread roasting in the frying pan: nobody has bothered to buy a toaster. Leon’s tapping out a simple rhythm with his bare foot and picking out the berries from the jar, bright-ruby and glistening, which he’s going to eat because Buddy doesn’t stand the sweetbread.

The spoons are clinking together, the streams pour from the plates, and Sasha lifts his hand, probably, to wipe off the foam’s splashes. Then everything seems to freeze for an instance. And it’s like something breaks in Sasha’s posture.

Stumbling against the table’s corner, Leon jumps off his chair and turns Buddy round to see his face. In the small vortex at the bottom of the sink the drops are swirling, dark and red as the ripen cherries.

 

**#69 Full Moon**

That night Buddy woke up to the clicks on the glass. He hung over the sill to discover the noise’s source and saw the American − damn him − silver-plated with a moonlight.

“Do you consider my windows to be fucking bulletproof to stand the stones?!”

“No stones.”

Leon threw accurately the empty shell-cases right into Sasha’s palms. Buddy felt the wormwood bitterness in his mouth. He strewed the shells back, listening to the metal bouncing on the asphalt. The American was waiting for something. You must be mad, or drunk, or just witless, to loaf around the town at night, where the war had been rumbling not so long ago. Ruffling his hair, Buddy said he’d come down in a minute. He’s not mad, or drunk, he’s just… just.

They walked the deserted streets. All the lights were down: the power lines hadn’t been repaired yet.

“Your fighters’re staying here for a little too long, don’t you think?”

Leon nodded.

“Yeah, leaving tomorrow. I mean− some of them, and me. So I came to−”

The American didn’t say “to bid farewell”, but Sasha helped him and cut the conversation with the cold: “I see.”

That night they hid at Buddy’s place, wishing to never be found again.

 

**#70 Madness**

Scattered throughout the world again, they seem to be consumed with some kind of a burning madness.

They sit up late, staring at the screens, and from morning to morning the circles under their eyes become darker and darker. They always have bottled water within the reach, because the endless chats make their mouths ash-dry, and sometimes Kennedy starts hiccuping of laughter. They share whatever they have on their minds at the moment, all the rubbish and ideas, so serious that babbling can turn into the heated and rageful − but never offensive or insulting − debates. They talk about everything and nothing at all, they dream and plan, and they realize things have gone too far, making love over the phone for the first time. Buddy doesn’t know, doesn’t even remember whose idea it was, and Leon tells how the guys from the Wiretapping Bureau were hemming delicately after all.

They strike off weeks from the similar calendars, waiting for the day when they can finally unleash their internal madness.


	8. 71-80

**#71 Abandoned**

He has promised he’d be back, so they could carouse properly in a pub, remembering the past, which is quite tiny for just two of them, though is heavy like the whole amount of water pumped out of the Marianas Trench. Buddy was a geography teacher once, that’s why Kennedy thinks such a comparison is sort of his thing − well, maybe, it’s a little bit too poetic.

He doesn’t want to search for excuses for why he hadn’t returned days before. There’re no excuses at all. But now, finally here, he steps onto the site of fire, and the brick crumbs are rusting roughly under his boots, and the blind windows are tearing with shards of glass, sticking out of the charred frames.

The familiar house is empty, its courtyard is ravaged, the tile pathway is destroyed with a bombshell. The rooms have been ransacked − now there’re only litter and shattered dishes and torn rags. He doesn’t want to see− he’s not ready to see the bloody and dried up streaks on a wall, or the body, writhed in a corner.

The Americans came to neutralize the rebels − those people from the Resistance, who have risen up with renewed vigor after their temporary truce. To _kill_ the rebels.

“Oh I’ve been waiting…” and even before turning his face towards the voice, Kennedy knows exactly how hard Alexander’s clenching his teeth and how true he’s aiming the barrel at his head.

 

**#72 Perseverance**

Leon Scott Kennedy is such a goddamn mischief that sometimes the only thing Buddy finds himself thinking is to smash Leon’s face against the door properly and intelligibly. Alas, the risk of making it even worse is just too big. Fortunately, Buddy’s very patient. Buddy has been through the entire anger management program, even got the certificate.

Leon Scott Kennedy can’t get over his far-off captivity in the basement. Maybe, it was the most outstanding event in his truly unremarkable, boring, flat life of a policeman, a government agent and a dreamboat. Buddy has no idea. Buddy can only guess.

On the Christmas week Leon brings him a bunch of presents, already wrapped, and says with a charming grin:

“Lace ‘em with some ribbons. You’re the pro at _that kind of stuff_.”

The old lady − their neighbor, a pure soul − moves about, and they, for such generous gentlemen they are, help her to fasten some suitcases on the roof of her slow-speed Juke. Leon throws the end of the luggage rope over the car and clicks his tongue:

“Fix it there. Just… _no knots, alrighty?”_

It’s one hour before the chopper comes to take Leon on a mission, and he runs around their apartments, wearing his vest and the most serious and concentrated face he’s managed to make. Buddy lowers the volume of Checkhov novels to contemplate a tangle of various wires, which just fell next to him. Leon winks, rushing by:

“There’s my GPS charger somewhere inside. _All hopes on you!_ ”

Buddy’s just off his flight, he’s sweated and been in an argument with customs officers, and he can’t hecking wait to have a shower, the contrast one − not at his own humble will, but by the utilities decision.

Leon Scott Kennedy is hellishly canny. Leon Scott Kennedy catches the belt Buddy just tossed away, and whispers, pressing with entire length of his body to Sasha’s back:

_“Tie me up.”_

 

**#73.1 Mirror**

It seems to appear in every damned mirror, in which he looks and sees a guy staring back, worn off by insomnia and much older than he really is. It seems like the cracks are showing, crawling, sneaking, and in the center of their crispy web is a fist, and it takes the only wink of an eye for the silver pieces to collapse into the sink, onto the bare hands with pulsing veins, onto the floor tiles, right under the feet. This silent scene, the blood splatters, the trembling shoulders − he catches them even in the glass case of a hardware store.

“What− what’s happened?!”

Buddy was quivering his head as if afflicted by Parkinson’s disease or plugged into a weak electrical circuit. He was mute for many minutes, and Leon wished to not run out of bandages so he wouldn’t need to go and get some more in the drugstore, leaving Sasha here, alone with his demons, which had subdued his anxious mind.

“My eyes− I thought, they’re turning red… again. I don’t want to go back. Don’t want that Hell to be back.”

Leon carefully takes the bubble wrap away, and the untouched, smooth cover mockingly splits with a quiet snap, breaking his haggard face in two.

 

**#73.2 Mirror**

It wasn’t easy at all to leave the Death Valley. They thought to stay for a couple of days and walk around the extant trails of gold diggers, looking for some faded reflections of the Indian tribes which once were living there but had almost gone since then. However the sight of blooming sands with clouds of sweetish fragrance, hanging over the ground, and fluttering heat haze (fourteen degrees Celsius in the shade, thank you very much), − all of this had literally rooted Leon to the spot.

“I was seven or so the last time I was here. My school decided it’d be pretty nice to take us for a weekend trip, to improve, sort of, our understanding of the country, you know this stuff,” without looking at Sasha he slightly nudged him. “Didn’t wanna go. I mean, piles of dried mud? You don’t say… I had plans to watch “Ghostbusters”, it’d just aired. The worst weekend.”

Fixing his gaze to the flowering valley, he sat right into the red dust, and Buddy, who was about to lose his mind of the heat, had nothing to do but give up.

With their air conditioner being completely dead, they has decided to drive at nights, and so now there’re three hundred miles of the highway behind their backs: at first, it was along North Dakota borderline, then − along the I-94, piercing Montana (Buddy’s become quite skilled at the states names); hopefully to find a motel, better than the previous one.

The car’s going on the highest speed it’s possible to get from the engine (one third less than it’s allowed), Buddy’s chewing up the beef jerky, his favorite for quite some time now, smelling of pepper and gas station where it’s been bought. He glances at the rearview mirror.

The road is empty. Leon is sleeping, snuggling against the backpack.

 

**#74 Teamwork**

It feels like your brain, the both of its hemispheres, has been divided with a laser blade into three dozen of pieces, so now each of them is independent of another, but they all are connected with the bared neuron-wires, sparkling and striking with electricity, and exsiccating your subcortex, however still passing the signals through, and sharpening your senses, and fastening your reflexes. And he can be everywhere at once and see everything for the eyeless lickers to lead them, tame them, incense them.

The human body is miserable and fragile. Choking on the wild fury, unnatural, synthetically raised in the honeycombs capsules, Alexander wants to crash it, not realizing yet that he himself is as miserable and fragile as it is, and as vulnerable as a newborn or a spineless slime, torn from its shell.

The lungs of the horrific creatures breathe for his own constrained chest, but he unwillingly blows his nostrils out and soak in not the smell of the blind, exhausting fear, but the keen, almost touchable will to survive at any cost. Something bursts inside of him, and he calls his lickers away.

And after all, when their claws reap the flesh of a new prey, which is closing like an indestructible mountain over that absurd, contagious idea to hang on to this worthless world, for a moment he is deafened not by the blood lust, but the lust of saving those ruins of a man, still smoldering somewhere deep inside of him.

**#75 Illusion**

Sasha has no illusions about his own personality. He is a tedious, sulky man, and after all what he’s been through lately these qualities have extended exponentially and, obviously, haven’t made him any better. His sight promises if not the death itself, then a long-term agony at least, of the Medieval kind. His stubble is as soft as grainy sandpaper. And his entire appearance is pretty far from pretty to smooth the flows of his temper over. And the thing which has just happened − it’s no more than only an inglorious outcome of the simplest chemical reactions, and so it’s not even worth of speaking about, it’s not a matter of a deep analysis or gnawing at yourself, which he’s performing successfully though, while the sheets under his back are getting more and more sticky of cold sweat, and a blanket is starting to feel like a concrete slab.

“…you’re not sleep’n’? Cook s’mthin’ if you wanna, I’ll be in five… mins…”

The American lying next to him turns and wraps into a stifling heaviness of the blanket. Buddy feels chilly.

“…ah yes. The milk. We’re outta, go get some… at the corner… five more mins−”

Sasha doesn’t flatten oneself with any wondrous illusions. He is grumpy, unsocial, and sometimes he acts so sarcastically it gives him a real toothache. He has a great bunch of quite annoying imperfections, he’s quick to judge and is very stubborn, especially when he’s clearly wrong. However, since now every Saturday Sasha makes up a simple breakfast for two, and from time to time he buys some cream, because Leon secretly likes it way more than milk.

 

**#76 Periodicity**

One… two… three… That’s how many times per minute a tiny watery glob falls down in the drip chamber of I.V. and heads through the transparent tube, following each and every of its flowing curves, to finally slip through the needle and into the vein. The veins of the sleeping man are seen as well as the forest paths from a SAR helicopter, although they are not light of dryness or dark of rains − they are blue and sick, thin as if the blood is rolling back, deep into the body, closer to the heart, to the fillings of the skull − to those parts it tries to save.

One… two… The piercing peep of medical devices, measuring the life so indifferently, echoes in the ward like a thundering explosion in the mountains, which surfaces are clean of the sweeping cuts of skies and gentle smears of snowboards. He has never been to mountains, but right now his lungs are squeezes as if of burning frost, and his eyes are wet as if of gelid wind.

Once he tries to doze, exhausted, but only startles of the nightmares, and so, swallowing the lump in his throat with an effort, he continues this phrenetic and possibly hopeless vigil.

The periodicity of the chest heaving is immutable. It is calm like a peaceful ocean breathing and constant like the soundless clocks ticking under the ceiling.

The periodicity of the pulse beating on the monitor, the heart shrinking, the fingers touching the motionless palm, is cyclical as the changing of seasons, eras, civilizations, and this vicious circle, spinning on and on, from days to nights, and nights to days, someday is finally broken by the broken voice:

“I hope… you’re not my doctor, aren’t you, Bud?”

 

**#77.1 Stripes**

No one’s around, the waves are serene, and the coral reefs on the bottom can be seen even at the sixty-feet-depth. There’s a small, almost toy-like cutter at the pier, the sun is playing on its windshield; there’re fresh fruits in the vase in a kitchen, in the evening their flavor will mix with the smell of a stewed meat.

Here the sea splashes in the azure eyes, and the shadows of the bushy palms give a shelter for those who’s not used to the scorching heat. Here the lips are salty, the touches are warm, the lungs are full of swooping breeze. Here the fingers leave their faint prints, erasable as the tracks of the bare feet on the beach; the skin turns golden, and the body is charged with delightful weakness which comes after euphoria, slipping into thee every tensed nerve.

Here the little things and details remind you of the recent intimacy, and Leon squints with a smile, looking at Sasha’s back, covered in stripes of the wicker sunbed patterns.

 

**#77.2 Stripes**

Nobody comes to greet him, which, in itself, is quite strange. And also there’s a stepladder stretching in the hall, which is even stranger. Hopefully, he won’t find anything way too extraordinary when he enters the living room. Please.

However, as the ruthless statistics have shown, the hope dies quickly and silently in this company.

In the center of the room, against all common sense and any kind of accident prevention, a construction rises instead of a coffee table, built of a couple of stools and an old, crooked chair, beaten by every type of termites and overstayed here only due to its doubtful status of a family relic. Guido, the drooling bloodhound, props it from the side, standing up to his full, almost human length. Finally, the very top of the monstrous conglomeration is crowned with Kennedy’s lower half (oh-so-fine in any other situation), while his head, the shoulders and the chest are hidden by the partly demounted ceiling. Everything around, as far as the eyes can see, is covered in dust and wooden scobs.

Buddy inhales as much air (and dust) as possible.

“I’m not even going to ask what the hell’s happening here. I only dare to show a slight interest in what exactly have urged you to give up on the ladder and try to break your stupid neck? Just, you know, curious.”

“Ah,” the voice hums somewhere inside the ceiling. “That’s Guido−” Leon stands on his tiptoes, the stools are staggering, aforesaid Guido pricks up his ears and starts to wiggle his tail. “He was− Ssshite−! climbing the steps, wanted to join, sort of, I believe, the hunter’s spirit… Gotcha!”

Buddy sorely tries to remember wherefore he’s decided to share his life with this… that… person. It seems there were some reasons once, yes, however now they all are veiled with the fog of time (and dust).

Suddenly Leon jumps down gracefully, nips out a stewpot from behind Sasha’s back like some sort of a conjuror and puts there something from his palms. Guido gulps nervously. Inside the pan, tiny paws slipping on the enameled sides, a stirring chipmunk is bustling.

 

**#78 Roads**

The course of Sasha’s life, all his intentions, all his plans and hopes were extending into the distance, like a straight and well-beaten highway, just slightly rounding some hills, and the line of his horizon was bright and clean, not obscured by a bunch of larches, nor a mountain ridge, nor a cloud, stuck to the skies. Everything was plain and simple as he himself, Alexander, Sasha, Buddy. And, putting his hand out his car window, towards the midday chill, he was driving along this road too fast to stop before the edge of the abyss, which seemed to stretch right to the planet’s core. He had time only to throw oneself out, into the wayside dirt and the stones, cutting his hands with their sharp sides, to scrape his elbows, to smash his cheekbone and to break some of his ribs − too bad it wasn’t his neck.

Behind the abyss there was nothing. A misty emptiness.

The course of Kennedy’s rushing existence was clear for at best six feet forward. At worse there was no course at all, and Leon was going at random. Not for the first time though; and moreover he had a quite good sense of direction. Sometimes the road turned into a goat track, spirally heading somewhere upwards to the top of Everest; another times it was bulging under his boots and sucking him down ankle-deep or knee-deep, or even worse-deep. However, Leon knew how to enjoy the little things and he also knew that any day now there would be a mile of the finest, footworn ground. Or maybe wouldn’t.

And his efforts to asphalt the rope, spanned somehow across the bleery chasm, are so diligent that Sasha unwillingly moves his eyes away from the road travelled and still calling him back.

 

**#79 Denial**

Leon knows what Buddy has been through. He’d like to say: “I understand,” but even if it’s true, it would sound like the most disingenuous lie. Leon knows perfectly; he’s been taught, he has read things, he has seen people who lost ground under their feet the same way, very similarly and very suddenly. Some of them were breaking, some, demolished, were rising up and going further, some he could save, some he couldn’t.

He watches Buddy sleeping; that Buddy who wanted to fall down with the lift cabin; that Buddy who will never be able to use his legs again by Leon’s efforts; that Buddy who were swearing in the unfamiliar language and trying, while still bleeding, to choke Leon up, before passing out. Leon hems softly and rubs his neck. To make decisions for the others is the worst part of his job, and he’s been messing enough with this man’s life, reshaping it in his own way. It’s time for Leon to finally go. Buddy has pulled through and now he’ll be okay.

“…And I was told you’re not visiting.”

Leon puts his palm away from the door knob.

“And I was thinking: yeah, right, that freak will rather sit up at my door, or come when I’m unconscious under sedatives, and stand over, and he’ll definitely convince the local staff to tell me some dubious lies, ‘cause his imagination isn’t worth a shit.”

Leon smiles, hanging his head.

“Just once you could arrange my damn pillow. You know how creepy it is to see while half-conscious someone waiting in a corner, all black and silent?”

Leon slides his fingers through the hair and, finally, he turns to Sasha. Maybe, today he should do something not for those who’s around, but for just oneself?

Leon decides to stay.

 

**#80 Flood**

The house is flooded with the racketing people; most of them Sasha doesn’t know personally. Leon finds him in the back bedroom, where once was a closet.

“Stealth increased to 99?” Leon shuts a sash window; even here, on the second floor it’s heard how scrupulously their guests are trampling down the lawn. “I thought you went on the run.”

Buddy is sitting with his shirt half-unbuttoned and the tie loosen, his elbows resting on the knees. He must be looking kind of lost.

“Well… if I decide to sneak away now, there will be choppers everywhere,” he chuckles, and Leon, tensed before, smiles softly.

“Chops − that’s so last century! Try our spy-bugs, the new model _Hunter-007_ , call now and get your own SA-tech as a bonus, quite talented, I must assure.”

Buddy looks up at him, narrowing his eyes, and then shakes his head slightly.

“Your jokes are the worst bonus.”

“My duty,” Leon solemnly declares, straightening a snow-white boutonniere on his lapel, “is to provide you with them ‘til your very end. C’mon. The sooner we start the sooner everyone leaves.”

Buddy grumbles:

“At this rate my end is not so far.”

However, he slips a jacket over his shoulder and stands to his feet humbly, and Leon cups his face, which is already bristly of his five o’clock stubble, and seals the next phrase with a kiss. The sensation of his warm hands and a chilly band of his ring sinks the whole world, waiting outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More on the way!


End file.
